Blossoming April ... and other tales

Pauley and I walked to our local pub for a meal on Saturday evening. On the way I had to stop to take photos of the gorgeous blossom on one of the trees in the carpark.

The blossom on our plum tree was beautiful last week but sadly the wind has now taken most of the petals so it wasn't a suitable candidate for a photoshoot today.

As you may remember, I promised an anniversary/milestone blog giveaway as the end of March/beginning of April is always an interesting time for me. I promised I would take photographs and do the giveaway blog as my next post, but sadly I haven't had an opportunity to do so as yet.

I hope you will bear with me as I have decided, now, to wait until the end of next month and hopefully make the giveaway something worth waiting for. As many of you know we are awaiting the arrival of our first grandchild and needless to say we shall be so excited when this happens that it would be nice if we can share our excitement!

The last few weeks have been hectic, to say the least, what with getting everything ready for the Dairy House Textile & Costume Day a couple of weeks ago, taking Mum away for a couple of days to see her brother (neither of them is a spring chicken and now she lives next door to us her remaining brother and 2 sisters who live in South Northants rarely see her. To my mind it is important that I make the trip for her as often as I can when you consider that the sofa held 171 years of life on its springs last Sunday when Mum and my uncle sat side-by-side.

I have also been spending a considerable amount of time this week thinking about my long-term plans for Dairy House. I have several ideas in the pipeline, but these need to be carefully considered and not put into practice until the time is right. 

I often take photos of furniture in Dairy House but sadly they do not do their subjects justice. Because several rooms have no daylight the colours are distorted and the end results are not a good advertisement for the stock we have on display. These few are the best of those taken recently. There are several pieces of pine in DH at the moment most of which I would quite like to have in my home.

I was so pleased that the Textile Fair brought in so many prospective new customers which had been the main purpose of the exercise - apart, of course, from giving everyone the opportunity to have a jolly day meeting friends, browsing and buying!!! Initially I had hoped to hold the event twice a year, but have now decided to make it an annual event to roughly coincide with the anniversary of taking over Dairy House. The date has still to be decided, but the second Vintage Textile & Costume Day @ Dairy House will, hopefully, be held in April 2011. A number of factors brought me to this conclusion, not least the fact that it was obvious from the numbers that it would have been impossible to house the visiting stallholders inside the building if the weather had been inclement. I shall, therefore, spend some time working out the best way of creating a windbreak or other form of weatherproofing to ensure that everyone is warm and cosy regardless of the weather.

Our trip to the farm gave me the opportunity to see the young calves - sadly I missed the birth of this one by a couple of hours

Belgian Blue mothers and Limousin fathers are producing some lovely calves

Don't these look contented! .

We have 3 dealers by the name of Liz at DH - but the one I now refer to is Liz who came with me from Somerton Antiques Centre to Dairy House a few years ago. She is an upholsterer by trade and is in the process of repairing and reupholstering our double drop-end sofa. We chose a Sanderson linen which goes with absolutely nothing in the house, so it has made us take stock of what we need to do on the house.

For some reason these 3 photos don't want to centre on the page, so we'll see where they end up.

We've had very little time to do anything to the house since we moved in almost 4 years ago. Dreadful, I know, but true. Normally we would be thinking about moving house at this stage but now Mum lives next door that isn't something that we can consider. So, we need to set to and decorate, recarpet and generally make good as if we were going to sell - because then it will become a nice house to live in. All our old homes have always been at their best just as we've put them on the market!!

So, tomorrow we'll be looking at paint colours. We already know which carpet will be right, but I'm not sure when we shall get round to doing it all. After all, we shall soon have our minds filled with baby things and decorating may get pushed down the list once again!

I'm hoping the garden will get some attention this year, too. It seems to have struggled along under its own steam for the last few years with very little care and attention. I've always been a keen gardener and I hate the fact that I've had no time to spend on it over the last couple of years. I'm not complaining, but it would be nice if there were 8 days in every week rather than the statutory 7.

As well as looking at paint colours tomorrow I need to start packing for the Vintage & Handmade Fair. This Saturday, 1 May, is the date and the place is once again Chipping Sodbury. I'm just having a single table this time, with some space for a rail. It'll be lovely to see everyone again, and I'm sure we shall be inundated with customers in the usual way. This event has become such a landmark on the Vintage Fairs Calendar and will no doubt be the usual credit to its organisers, Michele and Jayne. I look forward to seeing you there.